February 25, 2009

Okay, so I fly out of Charlotte on Thursday (tomorrow), headed for Portland, Oregon and three days of intensive pizza hunting. If anyone is in the vicinity, I will be at Tastebuds on Saturday morning (Feb. 28) at 11 AM to taste their Montreal-style bagels and wood-fired pizzas. Feel free to join me if you can. It's at 3220 SE Milwaukie in Portland. It would be great to meet you in person.

Then, I head to SF for the big, week-long photo shoot. I probably won't post here again till I get back on March 9th.

I am also supposed to be a guest on Gene Burns Radio Show on KGO on Saturday morning, March 7th--don't know the time and still haven't heard back if it's a definite, but I think it will happen. More definite is on Sunday, the 8th, a book signing and reading at 3 PM at Omnivore Books in Noe Valley, at 3885A Cesar Chavez St. Call the store for more details, (415) 282-4712. I plan on bringing some of the breads from the photo shoot for you to sample.

Don't forget the Asheville Bread Festival on Saturday, March 28th at Green Life Market, beginning at 10 AM. I will be giving a talk later that day at A-B Tech as part of the festival, all about the new book and the "delayed fermentation" method we've been working on together (me and our 350 recipe testers!). The link for details is on our Forum site.

Finally, another round of thanks to Mark Witt for his incredible support in setting up and managing the forum and the photo gallery (see previous post for the links and details), and to all of you who have registered and are participating in our new "bread-head" community. Who knows how it will develop and what interesting things will come out of it. Thanks to all!!

February 17, 2009

Okay, Mark Witt has given me the word, the gallery and forum sites are ready to launch. If you are not up to speed on this, please read my previous couple of blog entries for background. Otherwise, you can bring up the photo album gallery and/or the community forum by going to the following links. The first link contains all the welcoming info and instructions on how to register, post comments, and post photos. Mark has graciously offered to serve as host/moderator so all questions will go to him, not me (I would be of no help since this is all like a foreign language to me). I will join in as I can with comments on your comments and photos, but will mostly still communicate primarily through this blog. Mark has included his e-address on the welcome page in case you run into any technical challenges. Please remember that this is a work in progress , so we're all on a learning curve--but have fun with it as we go! This could grow into a really cool community experience. Thank you Mark and thanks to all of you who have been on this ride with me--the fun is just beginning--me has just turned into we!

February 14, 2009

Yes, as mentioned in the previous post, I am now on hiatus and will not be sending out any more recipes for testing until mid-March (exact date to be announced when I return from SF and the photo shoot). BUT, in the meantime, Mark Witt has just about completed the set up for a private site for testers and readers of this blog for a community photo album and commentary postings. In other words, we will soon be an open community of fellow bread-heads where you can interact with one another regarding this recipe testing journey we've all been sharing. Many of you have sent me great photos of both successes and failures (we will have a separate album for disasters and horror stories--Mark suggests we call that one "What Went Wrong With this?"). I'm very excited and will post within the next few days all the log-on information.

Now that we've passed some critical milestones it will be okay to share among yourselves these stories, but I'd still like to ask you to keep it in-house and not to post on public websites any discussions regarding these recipes. I need to also ask that you not post the recipes (other than your own that are not part of this book), as the editing is a long process and nothing that has gone out will appear in the book in that form. There is still tweaking going on in the recipes and in the instructions, so this will be our private community chat in which you can discuss aspects of the method and the recipes but not post the recipe itself. If you are not currently a tester but want to chime in with thoughts, questions, or suggestions, fine, but please don't ask for anyone to send you the recipes. If you want to join in as a tester, check back here around March 14th for the announcement about the resumption of testing. I will open the list to new testers then, but please don't write to me now--I won't be keeping a back-list.

Some of you have asked about sending in responses during the hiatus. Yes, please do--I will be checking e-mails daily, even from the road, so your suggestions and feedback will be helpful as we continue to refine the recipes and instructions. I may not always respond to you personally and I won't be sending out any more recipes for testing till we resume, but your feedback on the recipes you already received is greatly appreciated.

BTW, The English Muffin recipe is coming around, thanks to the determination of a few dedicated testers, most notably Lucille J., who has been relentless in her quest for the perfect English Muffin. I will send out the new version when we resume testing. It has some major tweaks from the version already out there and is easier and consistently better--way to go Lucille and all the others who have sent in suggestions!

When I post the log-on info for the communtiy photo album I will also post the ground rules and how to send in your photos if you are willing to share them. Mark will be the MC/Host. I can only hope that the photos we shoot in SF are as good as yours--many are of professional quality and are quite inspiring. If ours are not as good, I may be running back to you for permission to use yours (if that happens it won't be because of Leo, our photographer, but because my breads at the shoot didn't turn out as good as yours!).

I want to thank Mark Witt for all his hard work in setting up this new site. Many others have suggested similar ideas and offered to help, so I'm sure this will be an evolving process as you continue to communicate with one another (and I'll chime in when I can). I'll be be back in a few days to announce the kick-off. Till then, may your bread always rise!

February 06, 2009

As I prepare for the trip to San Francisco to shoot the photos for the book, I need to take a hiatus from this extraordinary recipe testing process to focus on making changes and corrections and tweaks to the text. It's just too overwhelming to try to do that and also answer the 100 e-mails a day that keep pouring in (and, BTW, welcome back to some of our early testers who have rejoined us). So this will be the last week that I send out recipes (Feb. 12th will be the final day) until we resume again in mid-March, when I return with all the editorial notes and corrections. I'll keep posting updates here each week until then and, when I come back, I'll post the new game plan for current and for new testers. Look for the announcement of a new cycle of testing on or around March 13th. But keep checking between now and then for other noteworthy announcements.

A couple of updates: the English Muffin recipe has been problematic, so wait till March to ask for it if you haven't gotten it already. The current version works for some but not for all, and the nooks and crannies that we all yearn for have been hit or miss. A few of you have really taken it on and are trying to find that perfect technique--thank you! One trick that has worked for some is to cover the muffin rings with a pan or skillet while they are on the griddle (including after you flip them over). It's possible that with this method they may not have to go into the oven at all--but the jury is still out so, if you already have the recipe and want to play with a bit, try it this way.

There have been a number of typos found in the different ingredient columns, such as the pizza dough #2, where it should say 6 tablespoons of water instead of 1 cup in the starter; sandwich rye should say 1 3/4 cups of water plus 3 tablespoons (some of you have the correct figures already); the streusel topping in the babka recipe should be 64 grams--basically, the ounce numbers are usually right but sometimes the grams and volume numbers are off because I formatted it wrong or forgot to change an earlier figure. So don't go on automatic pilot--check your measurements against the ounce column. Hopefully, we'll catch all of them before the book goes to print, thanks to the dozens of eagle eyes that you have provided.

So, this is the last week to request a recipe to test. Then we'll take a month hiatus and resume in mid-March. We should have a website set up soon with shaping and other photos, including a way for anyone who wants to add theirs to the photo gallery can do so. Thanks to tester Mark Witt for setting this up. I know a few others have private photo sites already going too, so if you'd like to make them accessible to readers of this blog, send me the coordinates again and I'll post them. Then, maybe you can all cross link to each other's site, as well as Mark's site, which will be the consolidated gallery. Mark also has some videos that he's made, which he'll tell you about when you go to the site. We should have that set up before I leave for the west coast (Feb. 26), so check back from time to time for details.

One final note: I am very excited about the feedback regarding the stretch and fold method used in some of the recipes and am thinking of adding it to many of the others. If you have any doughs that you felt didn't hold shape well, or did not rise well in the oven, the next time you make it apply two or three stretch and folds at 20 minute intervals before putting the dough in the fridge. Please let me know if you try this and if it makes a difference. Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to add this step--I think it's one of the big breakthroughs we've been looking for and it has me very excited.

February 02, 2009

It's 1:25 AM, early Monday morning, and I just sent off the manuscript to the publisher. It will now go into various stages of editing, but our work here carries on. We will continue to test and make tweaks until the last possible moment, still months away. Right after I sent it in, two testers wrote that they noticed the volume measure was wrong in the sandwich rye bread (should be 1 3/4 cups plus 3 tablespoons instead of 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons). There will be more like this, I'm sure. Another tester suggested that when making the pockets for filling in the Danish, to dip your thumb in water first to keep the dough from sticking--I do that myself but never thought to put it in the instructions. That's why I need all of you, so, thank you again for all the amazing work you've done. There's no way I could have made this deadline without all the constructive feedback you provided.

By the way, for those of you original testers from wayback in October, out of 350 or so who originally signed up, only about 35 are still standing (this process can wear out even the best of intentioned volunteers). We also have about 50 of the second wave testers still contributing. Any of you who dropped out for whatever reason are always welcome to jump back in. Also, I've received about 50 requests from those who missed the last cut-off and I promise to re-open the list for you in mid-March, after I return from San Francisco where I will be doing the photo shoot with out Ten Speed Press art department and our photographer, Leo Gong (www.leogong.com ) It will be an intense week and, by then, we should have some modifications in the instructions and I will need fresh eyes and hands to test the revisions. Till then, we continue to fine tune the recipes.

One final note, one of our testers sent me this link tonight for bread shaping videos. This is perfect for those testers (and anyone) who would like visual demonstrations of all sorts of shaping techniques: http://thebackhomebakery.com/Tutorials.html Let me know what you think. The little that I saw was impressive.